


Acoustic

by heavenlychaos



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Fluff, M/M, it's my au so i get to choose the roles, mermaid au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 08:55:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21966769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heavenlychaos/pseuds/heavenlychaos
Summary: Prince David finds a mermaid washed up by the docks.
Relationships: The Meta | Agent Maine/Agent Washington
Comments: 3
Kudos: 21





	Acoustic

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for titty-crissont on Tumblr for RvB Secret Santa! I was really pressed for time because finals but alas

Prince David was lying on the docks, a guitar in his hands, sandy blond hair in desperate need of a trim. The summer had kissed him with dark freckles across his face and shoulders, freckles that made him almost pass for younger than his early thirties. Combine that with the goofy grin that kept finding its way onto his lips, he was charming in the same way a puppy was. The rest of the nobles never took him seriously with a smile like that, always turning to his older sisters instead. He had learned to let them.

The sound of snarling, almost beastlike, pulled him from his strumming. He set aside the guitar and leaned over the edge of the dock, peering out into the sand. 

A man was pulling himself onto the shore by his forearms. He was slick with saltwater, the waves crashing over his back and over the curve of his head. With each drag of his torso across the ground, he winced, as if he was injured. 

David swept his legs over the side closest to the man and dropped down, sending a ripple of sand particles from the place where he landed. He jogged over to where he was struggling and got a closer look.

A massive orange tail stemmed from his waist where his hips should have been. Gold and tangerine scales flicked sunlight across the slick sand underfoot. At the very end, a golden fin fanned out from the tip of his tail, webbed and gorgeous. Except, it wasn’t. A huge, bloody hook was caught in the membrane, leaving an indent in the beach behind him. David crouched down next to him.

“Oh god, okay, a mermaid,” he muttered, more to himself than the man. He had, shockingly, never seen a mermaid before. This was a brand new experience to him. “Are you okay? What do I do?”

All the mermaid did was emit a deep, guttural growl from deep within his throat. 

He ran a hand through his hair as he assessed the damage. “You don’t speak human words. Okay. Cool. Cool cool cool cool cool cool cool cool cool co-”

He was interrupted by another growl. Impatient, this one. David put his face in his hands and forced himself to think. 

“I know!” He said, uncovering his eyes. His vision was met with the mermaid quirking an eyebrow. “I will carry you back to the castle, unnoticed, and help you there.”

A groan.

“But how?” He asked himself. The mermaid watched him as he tapped his fingers across his face as if it would get his brain to start. “I will take a wagon. Wheelbarrow? Whatever they’re called, I’ll be right back.” He almost told him not to go anywhere, but he quickly realized how stupid that sounded.

The mermaid simply put his face in the sand and stayed prone on the beach, trying to convince himself to accept the possibility of death before his newfound acquaintance returned. It would be fine, he thought to himself, maybe he would reincarnate as a seagull. Seagulls were cool. They were kind of mean, but he could live with that. 

David returned with an almost comically small, red wagon, like he’d stolen it from a child’s yard. He had. He was very nice about it. 

“I am going to pick you up and set you in this wagon,” he explained, running his hands through his hair. 

A growl.

“It’s very sturdy and has a sixty percent chance of carrying you the whole way up the hill,” he said, gesturing into the distance to the reaching stone castle that stood on top of a lush green hilltop. He was trying to convince himself about as much as the mermaid, if he was being honest with himself. This would be fine. 

The mermaid let him pick him up, albeit he was unhappy about it. He'd have to come up with a name for him later so he didn't keep referring to him as “the mermaid.” 

He tried to position him in the wagon as comfortably as he could, but, admittedly, it was very hard for anyone to feel comfort while a giant hook was stuck through their tail and they were being driven up a hill covered in canvas and sitting in a metal box. 

The mermaid growled as they moved over a particularly rocky section of the path. 

“Yeah, I know it sucks.”

He shifted under the canvas.

“Shush, we’re coming up on the castle.”

David took the wagon, completely inconspicuously and with absolutely no annoyed whisper-yelling whatsoever, through one of the servant’s halls. A maid gave him an odd look, but she simply shrugged and let him pass. He gave her a thumbs up. She rolled her eyes and waved him off. 

He eventually managed to get the mermaid into a deserted washroom. He struggled with him for a concerning amount of minutes before finally getting him comfortable in one of the tubs, which he then started to fill with water from the faucet. 

He leaned against the tub and took a second to rest his head on the rim while it filled. He closed his eyes as he felt his heartbeat slow to its normal pace. 

He felt something poking the back of his head. He sat forward and turned to see the mermaid with his elbow against the top of the rim, gesturing to his tail impatiently. He sheepishly rubbed the back of his head before standing up.

The mermaid watched him as he turned off the faucet, his gaze as steady as the water around him. The fin on his tail wasn't as sensitive as the actual tail, and usually when he got injured it only took a week or so to fully heal, so he was in no rush. It was, however, amusing to watch the young prince slowly realize with dawning horror that he had no idea what to do at all in this situation. He propped up the end of his tail on a barrel so the hook wouldn't do more damage, but from there he was clueless for a solid fifteen seconds at the least.

He started the process of removing it, his tongue sticking out between his lips as if this was the hardest thing he'd ever done in his life. The mermaid’s gaze didn't falter as David set the hook aside and started to pour cups of water to wash out the wound left behind. His tail shifted as he leaned closer, staring into the prince’s face. He reached a hand out of the water as if to touch him, then flicked water into his face.

He fell back, a deep rumbling sound that must have been a laugh emitting from his throat. David wiped the water away with his shirtsleeve, confusion quickly turning into thinly restrained amusement as he looked up and saw his new companion clutching his sides as if it was the pinnacle of comedy. 

“You aren’t making this easy, you know,” he said, grinning.

The mermaid swatted him with the tip of his tail, joy still tugging at his lips. The unsubmerged part of his skin had dried, and salt shimmered on his shoulders in the dim candlelight. David took the cup and filled it with water before splashing it back at him. He let out a grunt of protest as it met his face.

“I need to wash out the gap or it could get infected,” he stated, getting more water. 

He leaned forward, the scales of his tail pressing against his abdomen. He poked David’s hand with his finger. “Wash,” he said, the gravelly nature of his voice making the word sound primal. 

“Yes,” he replied, “wash. This is the best I can do right now but it’ll probably be fine enough to keep your tail useful.” 

The mermaid poked him again, this time in the cheek. “Wash,” he insisted.

“My name is David.” He poured another cup into the gash. 

“Wash.”

“Okay.”

He set the cup aside and leaned back on his hands, a sigh escaping from him. The mermaid moved his tail so it brushed against his face every so often, much to his chagrin. He shifted his weight and pushed it out of the way with one hand.

“That isn’t how you usually want to get someone’s attention, you know,” he said, letting his finger brush along the thing membrane, moving up and down with the indents. 

All the mermaid did in response was growl.

“How did you get hurt in the first place, anyway?” he inquired.

He pantomimed throwing something down into the water, making a small wave that collapsed onto David’s shirt. He winced, then nodded. 

“Sailors?” he said. The mermaid growled in confirmation. More water spilled from the tub as he leaned back, resting his arms against the rim. “That sounds awful, buddy. I’m sure they had no intention of hitting you, they probably just missed their target and you were underneath where they had aimed.”

He grunted, hitting him with his tail again.

“Stop being so whiny, you’re going to be fine. I’ll just keep you down here until you heal and we can go back the way we came through.”

He let out a groan as he tipped his head back to stare at the ceiling. 

“It’s not my fault you got hurt,” he said as he stood up. “I have to go now or people will start to worry. I’ll be back tomorrow with food. Be quiet, I’ll tell the servants to leave this room alone.”

David locked the door behind him, leaving the mermaid alone. He moved to knock over the barrel with his tail. 

The next morning, David snuck in with a tray stacked high with pastries. His hair had been brushed neatly, but his natural inclination towards a messy appearance had left it unruly nonetheless. He was wearing black slacks, but the matching blazer had been tied around his waist. He moved the barrel so he could sit beside his companion, poking him awake. The mermaid groaned, a low, guttural thing, and his eyes flickered open. David handed him a sugar coated donut that practically dripped with blue frosting. He crossed his legs and bit politely into a chocolate dipped madeleine as the mermaid swallowed the whole thing in two bites.

“You’re going to choke if you keep eating them like this,” he warned as he reached for another.

The mermaid gave him a look. “Wash,” he growled before not listening to a word David had just said. 

“I’m not going to fish all the crumbs out of the water for you. You’ll be lucky if I bother refilling the tub.”

The mermaid rolled his eyes and took a smaller, more gentle bite as he made direct eye contact with him. He then devoured the rest in a single bite.

“Brute,” he muttered, a smile playing at his lips.

They continued like this for a couple weeks, David visiting him a few times per day to bring him food and attend to the things he could not do while stuck in a metal tub. David taught him the art of chess, which took much patience and labor on his part, since the mermaid kept moving his knight way too far so he might knock over the king during his first turn. In turn, the mermaid would take paints he brought to him and make designs on his companion’s arm. Some of them were crude to say the least, but David found a form of comfort in watching his eyebrows knit together as his brush caressed his skin. 

Eventually, the day came where there was no excuse to keep him there. David walked in that afternoon with his guitar, as he did most afternoons. He sat on his barrel and propped his feet up on the edge of the tub as he took a second to adjust the tuning. The mermaid untied and redid his shoelaces as he played. 

After a few minutes, he sighed and set the guitar down. “We’ve gotta get you back out to the ocean.”

He growled in response, nodding. He let David haul him back into the wagon and cover him with canvas again before he felt the rattle of the wheels carry him off.

They reached the dock where David had first found him. He peeled the canvas back and helped him out onto the edge, where they both sat for a few moments. 

David gave his tail a gentle kick. “Will I ever see you again?” 

He swatted his leg back and nodded in response.

“I’ll come out here every day and wait for you,” he said, rubbing his thumb across the back of his hand where his companion had left a pattern of turquoise waves. “We can write songs and have cookies, still.”

The mermaid growled. “Wash.”

David grinned, a thought forming in his mind. “I actually have one more human custom to show you, if you don’t mind.”

He nodded, bracing his hands against the edge of the dock in preparation to leap back into the water. 

He leaned forward and pressed a gentle kiss to his lips. David sat back, tasting salt and frosting, unable to control his smile as he watched the mermaid flush pink, a flustered purring sound escaping from his mouth. He looked down and tapped the back of David’s hand before pushing off the docks and back into the sea. 

The prince walked back with the stolen wagon, a giddy spring in his step as lyrics started to bubble in his mind.


End file.
